Bad Apple [Coercive Love]

Staying-with-someone trope / age gap / height and build difference / Come chat with me in the comments! Just favorite the story to comment, so why not give it a try?

They've parted, and are on the road to reunion.

Blurb One:

Just before turning thirty, Lin Zhaohe welcomes a young girl into his home.

She's still in high school. He's powerful and wealthy, and takes excellent care of her. She's gentle, sweet, pretty, and adorable. Once she gets comfortable, she even pouts and throws little tantrums with him.

Sometimes he reprimands her too harshly and she gets mad and refuses to speak to him. He doesn't mind much. He's not good at apologizing, but he always knows just how much money to spend to cheer her up.

When she goes to university and becomes an adult, he develops feelings for her.

After spending so much time and effort raising her, he thinks it's only natural. She, however, finds it immoral and is overwhelmed with shame and anger.

Blurb Two:

In her first year of high school, Lin Yao is sent to live at Lin Zhaohe's house.

She knows who he is. His family sent him abroad when he was young, and at twenty-five he returned to Jingbei with a vengeance. His methods were ruthless and his conduct was harsh. In just two years, he turned the whole city upside down and seized most of the businesses the Lin family had built over generations.

She's just a tool for making others believe the Lin family and Lin Zhaohe are closely connected. Someone like him is not to be crossed.

She is careful in everything, terrified of making even the smallest mistake in front of him. Yet this fearsome man gives her protection and lets her study in peace. To win her over, he buys her endless dresses, jewelry, and accessories.

She's grateful by nature, so if Lin Zhaohe won't let her date, she absolutely won't. When his fiancee warns her not to get too close to him, she obediently keeps her distance. Even when he changes her college entrance exam preferences without her permission, she doesn't complain.

He's stubborn, old-fashioned, and doesn't understand her. Still, she respects him as a matter of course, loves him, and obeys his every word, treating him and his domineering fiancee like real family.

She's his younger relative, his little sister, but she can never be his lover or wife.

Because her heart already belongs to someone else.

After starting university, she wants to escape Lin Zhaohe's control and have a life of her own. She studies for entrance exams and starts dating the boy she's had a crush on for ages. Then, one day, he finds out about her and the boy. She thinks he might get angry, but if she explains herself, surely he'll listen.

But she never expects Lin Zhaohe, usually so indulgent toward her, to seem like a different person. He smiles at her as if she's just said something impossibly ridiculous.

His deep blue eyes cling to her like a venomous snake as he looks down at her. Backlit, his handsome, fierce face shows no expression at all.

It's a cold, merciless look she's never seen before, as if she were a worthless possession that no one else is allowed to touch, something meant only for him to admire.

That night, Lin Yao is pinned against the headboard. His burning lips press tightly against hers, and she can barely breathe. Her tears blur the boundary that had once kept them apart.

At last, he speaks in a low voice, so calm it's frightening.

"Lin Yao, isn't everything you have, from head to toe, something I gave you? What gives you the right to like someone else?"

Reader's Guide:

[Love can take many forms. Romance isn't the only one.]

1. Beautiful, innocent flower x powerful, patriarchal old man; possessive love / powerful man and weak woman / taboo uncle-and-younger-sister-style melodrama. You don't need to tell me if you're dropping it. This is a niche kink, and I don't accept writing advice.

2. The male lead has only ever been devoted to the heroine, body and soul, but has very little sense of morality. He really does have some psychological issues: a pure obsessive. He's Chinese-American. He has no fiancee; the heroine only thinks he does. Before she's an adult, while she's in high school, he absolutely, absolutely has no improper intentions toward her. He only looks after her as a younger relative and does not love her. He has no legal adoption relationship with her, and they are not registered in the same household. The romance starts only after she's an adult.

3. Eleven-year age gap. The heroine is overly dependent on the male lead, but she's not as spineless as the blurb makes her sound. She has her own ideas and sees him purely as a parental figure. The main story starts when she's in university: 19 x 30, 160 cm x 191 cm.

4. The heroine has a first love, and there's a little romance with him early on, but not much. She's beautiful, kind, and adorable. I'll indulge her a little: she's a true innocent flower.

5. The male lead is a financial tycoon, a classic domineering CEO.

6. Set in the 2010s in a fictional world. The financial details are made up, so just enjoy the story.

For more details, see the author's note in Chapter One.

Next book: Flower of Evil

Blurb:

The Kang family is one of Jingbei's most prominent families. As the eldest son, Kang Punian has always followed tradition, even allowing his family to choose the most suitable partner for him.

He doesn't resist at all. It's only marriage, after all. Of course he should choose a woman who benefits the family and can manage a household well.

After they marry, he gradually develops other feelings for his young wife. She's gentle and obedient, well-read and sensible, and does everything properly. But when she blushes shyly outside the bounds of propriety, she's unbelievably adorable.

He thinks he wouldn't mind spending the rest of his life with someone like her.

Until one day, as they lie intertwined in bed for the first time, his wife blurts out another man's name:

Tang Jitong.

He knows him. He's Tang Shuhe's brother, though they have different fathers and mothers.

Devoted man x resentful woman

Dark and obsessive x quietly stubborn

Instinctive attraction x instinctive revulsion

Reader's Guide:

1. The heroine truly loves her brother, and he loves her too. But he's a supporting character, and they won't end up together. They have no blood relation and are not registered in the same household. There is no romance between them while they are considered relatives.

2. The male lead is sexually pure, and he's a dark, obsessive man.

3. Another possessive-love story, more or less a marriage-first, love-later plot.

4. I might change the names if I think of better ones, but the story framework won't change.

5. Dated June 23, 2026.

Theme: You have to grow, even on your own.